Ranged DPS role is about to be excluded from all content

[kajv95]

I don't try to justify BLMs DPS here I'm just genuinely interested what peoples thoughts are about this, how much influence on DPS should player skill and general job difficulty have.

General job difficulty can be split into two aspects - a skill floor and a skill ceiling. The skill floor should not have any bearing on the end balance of the job if the goal is for them to be theoretically balanced in such a way that job difficulty is included, since just because something is easy to start out with, does not mean it can't be equally difficult at the end level.

When it comes to the skill ceiling, if the balance of a job is skewed due to a higher intentional complexity in order to justify higher dps, then there should be an endgame imbalance. However, this would mean that the job is also not liable to receive QoL updates to decrease difficulty, something Level 80 Black Mages may note is exactly what Xenoglossy is. This difficulty must also be something that can be objectively perceived, not just something on a subjective level, since players may excel at different things, and to punish a player for being who they are (as a person) is something that shouldn't happen.

With player skill, well, this is where the skill floor shines. A job with a more lenient skill floor will have a shorter gap to cross by default. The end goal should still be noticable as a difference. The jobs can also be centered more around bringing something else to the table, allowing the jobs to effectively be weaker in damage but strong in their own right, which is what I believe FFXIV's current balancing tries to achieve, but fails because the tools are overtaxed.

The goal of this design is to make every job unique for their own tools, but strong enough to compete in their own right. Bringing an edge of extra damage can be considered the top jobs' edge, but just as a Machinist's tactician is on a 3 minute cooldown, so too must the edge of damage be minor enough that you can clearly say "RDM is slightly weaker, because it has the tool of a raise, but BLM brings damage which could prove useful to get through a difficult dps phase check".

I'd say that 543 DPS difference you picked out is actually a reasonable ballpark to hit for the dps difference between something that has the niche of just bringing more damage as opposed to having one or two tools at their disposal. It also simply plays well with how other jobs can reach their full rDPS potential by buffing said higher damage options, since a party composition with a BLM will be able to pad said BLM further increasing the party's overall numbers as opposed to the previously mentioned RDM.

As for what these options should be like, in the case of Phys. Range DPS, this is already more or less entirely in place save some problems with them being incredibly weak. With DNC being focused around 1 Party Member more than BRDs (previously) party-wide effects, where DNC gains such tools as Devilment on the Dance Partner while BRD has Battle Voice, and Curing Waltz being an instant option of HP as opposed to a timed heal up effect which relies on someone else to take use of it. This is how the classes can be varied while still being in the same role, and not eating each other alive. As for taxing movement on these, just... no. If they do that, then they have to stop designing fights around some jobs having movement options. Mostly every job with high movement capabilities already have supportive skills with limited range, and that is where movement tax is already apparent. Else I'm going to have to start advocating a gap closer on ranged...

and perhaps this would also make it fun to think about which sets of jobs work together best, though it'd be scary if something of the sort gets overtuned and makes the whole thing break down again, which is why aside from fixing the problems with support feeling stupidly weak on classes whose lore screams support, I'll advocate bandaid balancing via pdps first before they try and make everything work in a nicer way.

tl;dr, the way the game is currently being balanced is not properly in accordance with how the game is presented by the developers, where jobs should all be close to each other in terms of end result in order to prevent meta-based exclusion. In this current design ideology, no job should be so much weaker that it can be argued that bringing something else and foregoing a role bonus is a better dps option. varying skill floors will always exist, and skill ceilings will too, but only if the design of the game itself changed, should this be taken into account. Player skill should always be rewarded, but that is a given when designing jobs' endgame to be closer to each other.